SNAIL'S PACE

[Demonland 73,140]

SNAIL'S PACE by Whispering Jack

The progress seems to be slowing down remarkably. We're moving at a snail's pace which is disappointing but at least the general thrust is forwards.

Several weeks ago on a humid night in Darwin, Melbourne equalled its 2009 quota of wins well before the half way mark of the season. On Queens Birthday, it added two premiership points with the tie against Collingwood and, even if participation in the finals was out of the question, we expected to see more signs of improvement as the season progressed. However, the team is stuttering along with a weak performance in Adelaide and a disappointing final quarter fade out against St. Kilda that left it 35 points in arrears at the end of the game.

The Etihad Stadium defeat against one of the premiership favourites wasn't a capitulation but the Saints were nowhere near their full strength. They were missing two key tall forwards and their best tagger but that didn't matter - they still managed to quell their nominated danger man in Aaron Davey, they nullified Brent Moloney, made mincemeat of the Melbourne forward line and managed to score the ton for the evening. It was a neat piece of work, executed in first gear, and came after disposing of the Cats a week earlier but some of their fans might have come away feeling it was a lacklustre effort given that it was nowhere near the painful thrashing inflicted on the Demons the last time they met at this ground two years ago.

For Melbourne's part, it had to be an improvement on last week when it crumbled against Adelaide at AAMI Stadium. The team started slowly and again conceded at least the first three goals of the game in what has become a characteristic feature of its performance. It seems as if it is somehow ordained in the stars that Demon fans must endure a weekly dose of mental torture in the first ten to fifteen minutes every time their team takes the field. As if the fumbling, the miskicks and poor decision-making weren’t enough, the free kicks all went St. Kilda's way (at one stage 7-0) giving the home team that easy early break. When the early haze lifted, they suddenly started winning the clearances and contested possessions, tackling and applying pressure and eventually worked their way back to almost level terms by quarter time. A pleasing feature of this was the contribution of youngsters Jack Grimes and Jack Trengove who each gathered nine touches in the opening stanza.

The teams sparred, pushed and prodded and the Saints, with their superiority in class and experience threatened to get away on two or three occasions over the following two quarters and, to their credit, the Demons plugged away and fought hard to limit the deficit to 16 points at the final break and their task was magnified after half-time by the loss of Grimes.

Life was made even more difficult by the lack of a key marking forward. Jack Watts was brave and much better than last week but he roamed far and wide. Matthew Bate was covered and the club has decided not to push any of its key defensive assets into attack. Matthew Warnock was dropped to Casey. The lack of tall who could mark inside the fifty metre arc (perhaps a legacy of not recruiting for such a player three or four years ago?) was accentuated by the way the players insisted on pumping the ball into attack when St. Kilda pushed players behind the ball. We saw players kicking to a five on one or two and just knew that inevitably, the ball would come out without a score.

Just as we knew that the young team would slow down and fade at the end so that a 35 point defeat at Etihad Stadium wasn’t all that bad in the circumstances. Brad Green worked hard with 26 touches and two goals and Brent Moloney and Jordie McKenzie helped make the midfield competitive but they weren't ever good enough to threaten a win.

Perhaps next week?

Melbourne 3.2.20 5.7.37 8.9.57 9.11.65

St Kilda 3.4.22 8.5.53 11.7.73 15.10.100

Goals

Melbourne Dunn 2 Green 2 Bennell Jetta Moloney Trengove Watts

St Kilda Milne 3 Hayes Montagna Schneider 2 Dal Santo Fisher Goddard Jones Stanley Steven

Best

Melbourne Green McKenzie Trengove Watts Moloney

St Kilda Montagna Goddard Gilbert Milne Jones Schneider

Injuries

Melbourne Grimes (hamstring)

St Kilda Nil

Reports

Melbourne Nil

St. Kilda Nil

Changes

Melbourne Nil

St Kilda Justin Koschitzke (ankle) replaced in selected side by Dawson

Umpires Kennedy Jeffries Keating

Crowd 31,993 at Etihad Stadium